The RSI is one of the most popular indicators available. This indicator, which represents the strength of market momentum based on the gains and losses over the past 14 candlesticks, is rational and is mainly used as an oscillator to determine overbought or oversold conditions. However, because the RSI is an older indicator, its very simple design—displaying only a single line on the graph—may feel somewhat lacking in functionality to modern traders. The main issue is that there is no objective measure to determine whether the RSI is currently rising or falling.
That’s when I came up with the idea of calculating the MACD based on the smoothed values of the RSI. As is well known, the MACD is an indicator that represents the distance between moving averages, designed to show when the moving averages cross as the value falls below zero. By observing the golden crosses and death crosses of the MACD and signal line, one can anticipate the golden and death crosses of the moving averages. Applying the same logic, I thought that calculating the MACD based on RSI values would allow us to predict the rise and fall of the RSI by observing these golden and death crosses.
Currently, the RSI is often used as a contrarian indicator to determine overbought and oversold conditions, but with this approach, I believe the RSI can instead function extremely well as a trend-following indicator. Whenever an uptrend occurs, the RSI inevitably rises, and when a downtrend occurs, the RSI inevitably falls. Therefore, by predicting the rise and fall of the RSI, it becomes possible to forecast what kind of trend is likely to develop.
In this indicator, the MACD calculated from the RSI is displayed, with the original RSI line plotted above it. Since the scales of the RSI and MACD are different, I originally wanted to provide a separate scale for the RSI on the left side. However, due to TradingView’s limitations, it seems quite difficult to display more than one scale in a single panel, so I had to give up on that. Instead, I ask that you mentally multiply the RSI values displayed on the right by 10—for example, 2.11 indicates 21.1%.
Additionally, as a bonus, I’ve included a feature that detects divergences. With these features, I believe this has become the most useful indicator when compared to existing RSI-based indicators. I hope you find it helpful in your trading.
In true TradingView spirit, the author of this script has published it open-source, so traders can understand and verify it. Cheers to the author! You may use it for free, but reuse of this code in publication is governed by House rules. You can favorite it to use it on a chart.
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